Plated Subscription Box Review + Coupon – March 2017

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Plated delivers a weekly box of pre-portioned fresh and seasonal ingredients, everything you need to cook their chef-designed recipes at home in your own kitchen. Each week, they offer a different menu, and you can select which dishes you’d like to make, how many plates of each dish you’d like to serve, and when you’d like to receive your delivery. You can skip a week at any time.

At least three of the dishes offered on every menu are vegetarian. Plated also regularly rotates in vegan and dairy-free options. They’re committed to using sustainably sourced seafood, seasonal produce, and meat that’s free from antibiotics and added hormones. (Check out Plated Menus to see what’s coming in future weeks!)

The Products: All of the pre-portioned fresh and seasonal ingredients you need to make chef-designed recipes at home in your own kitchen.

Ships to: 95% of the U/S. (Currently, Plated does not ship to Hawaii and Alaska, and there are also a few cities in Texas, including San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo, and Midland, where they don’t yet ship.)

Each week, Plated offers a different menu with 11 dishes to choose from. After your first order, you can also add on dessert at a cost of $4 per serving. There are two different desserts available each week.

When my box shipped, I received an email letting me know that I would need to have the following “pantry items” on hand: olive oil, canola oil, black pepper, and kosher salt.

Plated packs every box with meats on the bottom, surrounded by cold packs, and everything else on top, bundled by recipe.

Meal #1-Peking Duck Pizza with Caramelized Red Onions

Calories Per Serving: 730

Cook Time: 40-50 minutes

When I opened up Plated’s menu for this week, this recipe for Peking Duck Pizza jumped out at me right away. It looked absolutely delectable!

Here’s a shot of all the ingredients that were included for this recipe:

Before I started cooking, I cleaned and prepped my veggies: I diced the red onion, chopped the English cucumber, and sliced the scallions.

Plated included confit duck for this recipe, and the first step was to roast it in the oven and with some Chinese 5-spice. After it was roasted and cooled, I shredded the meat and tossed it with hoisin sauce and soy.

Next, I rolled out the pizza dough, topped it with mozzarella and caramelized onion, and baked it in the oven until the crust browned and the cheese bubbled.

I finished the pizza by topping it with the shredded duck, scallions, and cucumber.

This pizza was amazingly good! Seriously, I think it has to be one of the tastiest meals I’ve ever received from Plated! The shredded duck was sweet and rich, and it was delicious with the caramelized onion, scallions, cucumber, and melty cheese. My husband and I devoured this pizza!

Meal #2- Shepherd’s Pie with Beef, Carrot, and Chives

Calories per Serving: 580

Cook Time: 40-50 minutes

For my next meal pick, I decided to go with one of Plated’s “encore recipes,” Shepherd’s Pie. This recipe is actually one of the first meals I ever ordered from Plated, and I enjoyed it so much that I was excited to see it back on the menu.

I got the potatoes boiling right away, and I started browning the beef while I chopped the onion, carrot, and parsnip.

After the beef cooked, I sautéed the veggies and then added the meat back in with tomato paste, flour, Worcestershire sauce, and chicken stock to make a sauce.

I made mashed potatoes by whipping cream and butter into the cooked and drained potatoes and then spread them over the top of the stew. I put the pan in the oven to brown the top of the potatoes and then divided the mixture between two bowls. (Note that Plated included chives for topping the pie, but I decided to substitute parsley instead.)

This Shepherd’s Pie was just as good as I remembered! It was rich and meaty, and I loved the flavor the parsnips added to the stew.

Meal #3- Thai Fish Curry with Kaffir Lime and Jasmine Rice

Calories: 690

Cook Time: 30-40 minutes

My last meal pick for this week was Thai Fish Curry, and when I opened up the bag of ingredients I noticed a couple of issues with the provided ingredients: the tomatoes were bruised and broken and the spinach was wilted. (I reached out to Plated’s customer service, and they responded quickly and issued me a $15 credit.)

I substituted these ingredients with some grape tomatoes and parsley I had on hand.

I cooked the rice for this dish in a small pot and started the curry in my wok. I sautéed ginger and onion together until soft and then mixed in red curry paste, brown sugar, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce, vegetable stock, tomatoes, and lite coconut milk. After allowing the curry to simmer a while, I added in the parsley (my substitute for the provided spinach) and nestled tilapia in the sauce to poach. When the fish was cooked through, I divided the curry between two bowls and served it with rice.

This dish was another winner! It was extremely flavorful, and it definitely tasted like the kind of dish that would take an entire day to prepare. The curry was spicy, rich, and bright— yum! I would absolutely order this meal again.

Verdict: This box from Plated was outstanding.I loved all three of the meals I received! I’m disappointed that some of my ingredients arrived damaged, but I’m pleased with how Plated’s customer service handled the issue. Plated is a little pricier than some of the other subscription meal boxes out there (Home Chef, Hello Fresh, and Blue Apron are all a bit more affordable), but Plated regularly comes up with recipes that really wow me. For that reason, it’s one of the meal boxes I look forward to most every month.

Do you subscribe to Plated? Have you tried any of the meals I picked this week?

Lindsey is a professional baker by day and a subscription box junkie by night. She first subscribed to Birchbox in 2013 and her addiction grew when she signed up for Graze, PopSugar, and Knoshy. Her favorite part about being a subscription box addict is discovering new products- especially gourmet goodies, beauty products, and kitchen tools!

All views in this review are the opinion of the author. My Subscription Addiction will never accept payment in exchange for a review, but will accept a box at no cost to provide honest opinions on the box. This post may contain affiliate/referral links. Read the complete My Subscription Addiction disclosure.

2 Comments

Miranda B
March 21, 2017 at 1:07 pm

I love Plated! I used them last early Spring according to my profile lol and now I’m using them again for meals. It’s like a way to change the seasons for me, to get out of the winter rut here in the Midwest.
We get three meals a week, and while it’s costly, we do not go out to eat unless it’s a special occasion, so we save money there, and it helps me save money splurging at the grocery store not to mention time meal planning and shopping. So it works out.
As a side note, I use the meals to feed me and my 8 year old and often we divide the plates differently according to our taste preferences (I’m a vegan, he’s the meat eater). Often times I’ll split up the ingredients and supplement them, i.e. he likes more basic foods and Plated offers a lot of veggies/healthy stuff that kids aren’t touching so I’ll give him mac and cheese or fresh fruits or something else familiar. We can use a single “plate for two” to last through dinner and lunch the next day for our family of two.

I had the Shepherd’s Pie last week and the Peking Duck pizza this week, and I agree completely with your assessment. The duck pizza was really something special, and I loved that they sent pre-confited duck since that is so time consuming!